Social care services
Most local authorities spend tens of millions of pounds on social care services every year, however it is an area which procurement has traditionally found to be very challenging. A focus on care quality and service levels, combined with the difficult supply/demand balance in many care markets, has meant that the standard procurement approach has been rejected by social care departments. As a result there are many opportunities to reduce cost and improve quality via intelligent and innovative procurement practices.
Social care sub-categories include:
- Community services
- Day care
- Fostering and adoption
- Healthcare equipment provision
- Homecare (domiciliary and personal care)
- Residential and nursing care
- Respite care
- Temporary accommodation
Some of the challenges we typically find in this area include:
- Addressing the cost of care packages as a whole i.e. considering the total cost of dealing with a particular client's needs
- Managing various budgets for similar service provision. Contracts could be funded by the relevant Council's own budgets, but also by the PCT or through Government grants
- Measuring cost objectively in terms of the quality and the service levels required
- Having a limited number of providers that can provide the particular services in the local market
- Leveraging the relationships with large-spend providers that have contracts across the organisation